CHAPTER XLVII 

 WHEN NATURE SMILED 



IT seems a law that every deep valley must be next 

 a high mountain. Our sorrows ended when we quit 

 the canyon, and then, as though in compensation, na- 

 ture crammed the days with the small joys that seem 

 so little and mean so much to the naturalist. 



Those last few days, unmarred of the smallest hard- 

 ship, were one long pearl-string of the things I came for 

 the chances to see and be among wild life. 



Each night the Coyote and the Fox came rustling 

 about our camp, or the Weasel and Woodmouse scram- 

 bled over our sleeping forms. Each morning at gray 

 dawn, gray Wiskajon and his mate always a pair 

 came wailing through the woods, to flirt about the 

 camp and steal scraps of meat that needed not to be 

 stolen, being theirs by right. Their small cousins, the 

 Chicadees, came, too, at breakfast time, and in our 

 daily travelling, Ruffed Grouse, Ravens, Pine Gros- 

 beaks, Bohemian Chatterers, Hairy Woodpeckers, 

 Shrikes, Tree-sparrows, Linnets, and Snowbirds en- 

 livened the radiant sunlit scene. 



One afternoon I heard a peculiar note, at first like 

 the " cheepy-teet-teet" of the Pine Grosbeak, only louder 

 and more broken, changing to the jingling of Black- 

 birds in spring, mixed with some Bluejay "jay-jays," 



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